Archive for the 'Articles' Category
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
There is general agreement, I would guess, amongst more traditional Anglicans, that the current set-up for the implementation of the Covenant is flawed, and that especially the ordering of the ACC’s Standing Committee in this implementing process is so confused and liable now to engendering such further distrust amongst churches as to demand rethinking. That [...]
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February 02 2010 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
We have learned today from Bishop Mouneer Anis that he has submitted his resignation from the former joint standing committee. Following so closely the release in December of the final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant, this resignation underscores the extent to which the Anglican Communion is at a major crossroads. At this decisive moment, however, substantial doubts have been expressed both publicly by Bishop Mouneer and privately by others as to whether this committee, now the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, is the appropriate body to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant. These concerns point to the steps that we believe are necessary to restore the Communion so badly damaged by actions in North America over the last decade. In what follows, we seek first to outline the current structural challenges to the Covenant’s initial implementation. This will involve some important, if technical, analysis. Only then, however, can we make clear what, in our mind, these necessary steps for implementation are.
In summary, and on the basis of our continued conviction that the Covenant itself as currently formulated is a positive, faithful, and necessary basis for the renewal of the Anglican Communion and its member churches, we argue that:
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January 31 2010 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Advent now shifts into the manifestation of God’s good will in the Nativity feast. So too the church takes its self-scrutiny and penitence, and turns in hope to the gift of God’s own and new life among us.
The final text of the Anglican Covenant has now been sent out for adoption by the churches of the Communion. The slow process by which this text and its official dissemination for action has occurred has frustrated some, yet its persistent progress forward to this point at last puts the lie to the naysayers and early eulogists of the Covenant’s purpose. Joined to the restarting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic international dialogue, to be focused on substantive matters of ecclesiology and moral decision-making, what seemed merely slow now appears to be the visible sign of a tectonic shift in global Anglicanism and Christianity itself. It is one in which the Episcopal Church in the United States has placed itself on the far side of a widening channel separating the ballast of Christian witness, Catholic and Pentecostal, from marginal spin-offs of liberal Protestantism in decline.
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December 22 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
1. Now that the final text of the Anglican Covenant has been sent to the member churches of the Communion, it is useful to outline the procedures by which member churches and other churches enter into the Covenant. In reviewing these procedures, it is important to be mindful of the distinction between committing to the Covenant, which churches may do at any time through affirmation or adoption, and formal recognition of that fact by the other Covenant churches or the Communion Instruments.
2. Section 4 of the Covenant specifies two procedures by which churches may enter the Covenant. Paragraph 4.1.4 deals with churches that already are recognized as members of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four Instruments of Communion. Paragraph 4.1.5 deals with “other churches.”
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December 22 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
In recent days, Fr. Mark Harris has published a comment on Bishop Stanton’s address to the Convention of the Diocese of Dallas (link) entitled “Bishop Stanton barks up the wrong tree so that we won’t notice the bite.” (link) The comment demands response because it shows so clearly the dubious nature of both the substance [...]
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November 10 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Monday, October 26th, 2009
The Diocese of South Carolina received a letter from Bonnie Anderson, the elected President of the House of Deputies. It was followed by a second statement saying that it was her practice to send such letters to each Diocese before their conventions.
In what follows we pay attention to sections of the first letter, where the President of the House of Deputies spoke at some length of her interpretation of the resolutions to be voted on at the South Carolina Diocesan Convention. These remarks seek to be substantive in character; presumably they represent her own considerations as well as those of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. For that reason they deserve comment and evaluation of their own.
At the outset, we note that it is the duty of the President of the House of Deputies to preside over that body. Neither she nor the Executive Council is the constitutionally-designated Ecclesiastical Authority in the Diocese of South Carolina. It is not her role to instruct or interfere with the lawful diocesan Authority.
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October 26 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Rt. Rev. James M. Stanton, Bishop of Dallas
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
“Every Diocese is an independent and sovereign state, held in the unity of the Catholic Church by its Episcopate, according to the rule of St. Cyprian.” With these words, Bishop Alexander Charles Garrett – our first Bishop and,be it noted, once the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church – addressed the organizing Convention of the Diocese of Dallas in 1895. “The Diocese thus becomes the ecclesiastical unit, a full and perfect integer sufficient of itself for all purposes of growth and development.”
It was for the privilege of so organizing and of taking the key next step, that of a selection of Bishop, that the body was convened, he said.
Bishop Garrett looked back on the twenty-one years of the existence of the then Missionary District of North Texas, and the principles upon which he had led them. And then he turned to look at the state of the Church as it then existed so that the future could be embraced and the people of the new Diocese would understand what opportunities and challenges awaited them. Thus they stood at a crossroads.
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October 23 2009 | Articles
Written by: Rev. Dr. Philip Turner
Monday, October 19th, 2009
As you know, my subject is the Anglican Covenant. Is it really Anglican? Is it really necessary? Is it theologically defensible? Is it an effective way to address our present difficulties? I will get to these questions and others in due course, but first, to make sure we know what it is that we are talking about, I must take you on a little trip down memory lane. The first book I published was a collection of essays entitled “Crossroads Are For Meeting.” The date was 1986, and the particular cross in the road faced at that time by the Anglican Communion was the nature of its mission, and in particular its mission as a world-wide communion of autonomous churches. Previously, in 1963, The Anglican Congress had defined the inter-relation of these churches as being one of “mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ.” At this gathering, the assembled delegates took a dramatic step in defining the nature of Anglicanism as a communion rather than, say, a federation; but there were divisions over the Communion’s calling. If Anglicans are to understand themselves as bound by mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ, just what is the purpose of this communion under God?
The collection of essays I helped assemble revealed a profound division over this matter, one that is with us to this day. Is the mission of the Anglican Communion to join other Christian bodies in spreading the Gospel of reconciliation and redemption through Christ’s victory on the cross, or is it, with other churches, to join Christ in a sacrificial struggle to include the oppressed and marginalized and so to establish justice on the earth? Despite very articulate pleas that these two views need not be in conflict, they were in conflict then and remain so to this day. This conflict over the mission of the church has returned in our own time with such ferocity that it threatens any possibility of meaningful communion.
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October 19 2009 | Articles
Written by: Mr. Mark McCall
Monday, October 19th, 2009
Bishop Stanton has already addressed the subject of TEC’s polity from the perspective of its history and constitution. In just a bit, Dr. Turner will talk about the Anglican covenant, its provisions and background. What I want to do briefly is address both of these topics, but from a different angle: first, to talk about TEC’s polity from the perspective of the civil law and then to look at the Anglican covenant from the perspective of TEC polity. I hope when I am done that this is coherent and I can tie it all together!
First, TEC polity. And to begin, why do we care what the civil law has to say? The answer to that largely lies in the fact that there are now several civil lawsuits around the country in which courts are addressing TEC polity. This is not the way we want it to be, but it is the way it is. And barring some unexpected negotiated settlement of these lawsuits, the secular courts will have profound things to say about TEC polity that will affect us all. So we have to care.
First, TEC polity. And to begin, why do we care what the civil law has to say? The answer to that largely lies in the fact that there are now several civil lawsuits around the country in which courts are addressing TEC polity. This is not the way we want it to be, but it is the way it is. And barring some unexpected negotiated settlement of these lawsuits, the secular courts will have profound things to say about TEC polity that will affect us all. So we have to care.
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October 19 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
ACI welcomes the encouragement given by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the decision by the Diocesan Board and Standing Committee of the Diocese of Central Florida to affirm the first three sections of the Anglican Covenant. As we have previously stated, these sections entail substantial commitments to mutual responsibility and interdependence in the life of the Communion. While it is not ACI’s prerogative to release the full text of the letter, we are grateful for the Archbishop’s recognition that acceptance of the Covenant, in whatever form, is the means by which we declare our “intent to live within the agreed terms of the Communion’s life.”
We also acknowledge that endorsement by dioceses “would not instantly and automatically have an institutional effect (and so would not automatically affect the diocese’s legal relationship with the Province of TEC).” As the Archbishop notes, matters regarding the implementation of the Covenant in the Communion remain to be sorted out. No one can expect that the institutional effects will be felt “instantly or automatically.” But everyone recognizes that such effects, if not instant or automatic, are nevertheless certain.
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October 01 2009 | Articles
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